In Her Shadow

by Douglas, Louise

  ‘Shhh!’ Mrs Todd snapped, glancing up towards the ceiling. ‘If he hears you …’

  ‘Why can’t you just go away?’ I asked Ellen.

  ‘You know I can’t,’ she said. She pulled up the hem of her nightdress. Beneath it, her ankle was horribly swollen, and coloured purple; the skin was spread so thinly over the swelling that it looked as if it might split at any point, like an overripe plum.

  ‘He did that to you?’ I gasped.

  She let the nightdress drop again. There was a tiredness in her eyes, a resignation that I had never seen before.

  ‘I was standing at the door waving goodbye to Tante Karla,’ she said dully. ‘She was in the taxi and I said something about how much I would miss her, and …’ She exhaled slowly.

  ‘And what?’

  ‘He said he was glad she was gone. He said “good riddance”. He called her an interfering old witch. And so I knew.’ She looked up at me and gave a little shrug. ‘I knew he hadn’t changed at all. He just wanted her out of the way. The taxi was at the gates and I thought I could run after it, that I could get in and go with Karla – but he was too quick.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He closed the door on my ankle,’ Ellen said. Her voice was calm, matter-of-fact. ‘He did this to me and he loves me. Think, Hannah. Think what he’ll do to Jago.’

  I scratched the inside of my elbow. ‘Did Tante Karla see what happened?’

  Ellen shook her head. ‘Papa was different when she was here. He’s clever at making people believe everything is all right. She doesn’t know anything.’

  I didn’t want to believe Ellen. I wanted this to be another one of her stories, an exaggeration of the truth, a melo-dramatization of a mundane sequence of events, but this time Mrs Todd was there, endorsing Ellen’s version. This time, even I could not convince myself that Ellen was lying.

  ‘I know it’s difficult, Hannah,’ Mrs Todd murmured, ‘but what we’re doing is for the best. It’s the only way.’

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  WEIS KLOSTER WAS a nursing home for retired gentlewomen, run by nuns and located in former convent buildings on the outskirts of Magdeburg. The surroundings were beautiful, like the grounds of a country estate – all lawns and lovely, wide-limbed trees – and the sunshine showed the place off to its best advantage.

  John and I had stopped on the way to buy a bouquet of blowsy orange-pink roses and baby’s breath for Mrs Todd, and I held the flowers, tastefully wrapped in recycled paper, on my lap.

  I knew, as soon as I saw it, that Mrs Todd would approve of the nursing home. The large, arch-shaped front door was open wide, and inside was a sparse but elegant reception area. We rang a little hand-bell and a sweet-faced nun wearing thick-rimmed spectacles materialized behind us. John had telephoned ahead to let the nuns know we were coming to see Mrs Todd, and when we wrote our names in the visitor book, the nun smiled and gestured for us to follow her.

  The heels of our shoes tapped on the tiled floors of corridors with arched ceilings. The walls were whitewashed and inset with narrow windows that filled the place with light. At the centre of the Kloster was a large chapel, coloured light falling through the stained-glass windows and making spangles on the floor, where a nun sat praying beside a veiled woman.

  The nun led us into a separate wing. She stopped at one of a number of identical doors and knocked with her knuckles, although she did not wait for a reply but turned the handle to open the door. A tiny old woman was sitting in a chair by the window. It took me a moment to recognize her as Mrs Todd. She was wizened and shrunken, like an apple that’s been left too long in the bowl, her hands flickering in her lap with the tremor of Parkinson’s. Still she wore black, still her white hair was in a bun, still her spectacles hung around her neck although she had no need of them any longer.

  The room, clearly a former nun’s cell, was light and airy and clean. Apart from the chair, all it contained was a single bed, high enough to be practical for use by an elderly woman, and a narrow chest of drawers. A framed picture of a dark-haired child wearing a white dress was propped on the chest, together with a few trinkets, and a plain wooden cross had been nailed to the wall.

  The chair had been positioned so that Mrs Todd could look out of the window. She was too old and frail now for reading, or knitting, or any of the other pursuits she used to enjoy. All she could do to pass the time was watch the world through the four small square panes of glass in the leaded window. I wondered if that was what became of all of us in the end, if we lived to be old. Watching the world through window glass.

  A different nun, the one who had taken the flowers from us, brought them back in a glass vase which she placed on the shelf beside the door, next to the picture of the child, so that Mrs Todd could look at the roses while she was in bed. The nun, who seemed to speak no English, sniffed the roses and smiled broadly.

  ‘Schön!’ she said. ‘Frau Todd, sind sie nicht wünderschön?’

  ‘Ich brauche keine Blumen,’ said Mrs Todd. I did not know what she meant, but the nun made a kindly if apologetic face. She mimed that Mrs Todd tired easily, and that we should not stay too long. ‘Maximal zehn Minuten!’ she said, holding up the fingers of both hands, before she left the room in a bustle of skirts and soft footsteps.

  There was nowhere for John or me to sit, apart from the bed. I sat on the edge of it, close to Mrs Todd. John stood by the door, looking for and failing to find something he could pick up and read.

  I shuffled a little closer to the old lady, leaning towards her, resting my elbows on my knees. From there, I too could look out of the window.

  ‘Mrs Todd,’ I said, ‘I’m Hannah Brown. I used to be friends with Ellen.’

  The old lady blinked.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I’ve been thinking about Ellen a lot lately,’ I continued. ‘And you. When I think of Ellen, I think of you too.’

  ‘I should have stood up for her,’ Mrs Todd said. ‘She wanted the flowers but he threw them away.’

  ‘Who wanted the flowers, Mrs Todd?’

  ‘Anne.’

  I remembered Mr Brecht throwing the flowers down the stairs and Adam Tremlett gathering them in his arms.

  ‘I promised her mother that I would look after her,’ said Mrs Todd, ‘but I failed her. I let him have his way and it wasn’t what she wanted, not at all.’

  A tear made its way over the rim of one of her watery eyes and slid slowly down her cheek. I reached over and gently wiped it away with the tissue I kept up my sleeve.

  ‘Mrs Todd, nobody could ever accuse you of being less than diligent. That’s why I wanted to come and see you, to tell you how much I—they appreciated you,’ I said. ‘You could not have done any more for the Brechts. Nobody could have asked more of you.’

  From the doorway, John asked gently, ‘When did you start working for the family, Mrs Todd?’

  ‘When Mrs Withiel was expecting.’

  ‘Mrs Withiel was Ellen’s mother’s mother,’ I explained. I turned back to Mrs Todd. ‘So you looked after Anne from the day she was born?’

  ‘Before she was born.’

  Without turning her head, Mrs Todd raised her hand in the direction of the photograph on the shelf. ‘That’s her,’ she said. ‘That’s my Anne.’

  John picked the photograph up and passed it to me. I held it carefully on my lap. Anne looked like a happy child, leggy and skinny with two of her front teeth missing. She was standing in the back garden at Thornfield House.

  ‘She was a lovely little girl,’ I said.

  ‘And no trouble. Never any trouble, she was good as gold,’ said Mrs Todd.

  ‘I always knew you were close.’

  ‘The Withiels were good people. They loved that child more than life itself. And then she started to play the piano …’ Mrs Todd’s voice fell.

  ‘You didn’t like her playing the piano, Mrs Todd?’

  ‘She played like an angel. They didn’t want to send her away so they had tutors come to h
er. There was room to put them up – plenty of room in Thornfield House. One came after another, but Anne was better than all of them.’

  ‘And when she was twelve, they sent for Pieter Brecht?’ I asked.

  Mrs Todd nodded. Her hands were trembling and she had slumped a little in the chair. It seemed disrespectful to touch her, to lift her straight. At the sound of Pieter Brecht’s name she became visibly agitated. She licked her lips and her eyes moved forwards and backwards.

  ‘He’d already made a name for himself in Europe. They said he was a genius. He had a charisma …’

  Mrs Todd looked at me as if she were trying to make me understand something without having to articulate it. Her lips opened and closed as she tried to find the words she needed. Then she gave up, closed her eyes and rested her head back on the pillow that had been placed at the top of her chair.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I didn’t mean to upset you. Would you like a drink, Mrs Todd? A cup of tea?’

  ‘Water.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ said John. He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him. I heard his footsteps receding down the corridor.

  I moved a little closer to Mrs Todd, so close that our knees were almost touching and I could see the white hairs growing downy on the skin of her face, and the beat of her pulse through the vein on her neck. I thought, God forgive me, but I asked the next question anyway.

  ‘You never liked Pieter Brecht, did you?’

  The old lady moved her head a fraction. ‘He corrupted her.’

  ‘But he loved Anne! Surely he would never have done anything to hurt her?’

  There was silence in response. I waited, but Mrs Todd said nothing. Her eyes flickered open and although her face did not change, her hands were wrung together as if in grief.

  ‘He was twenty-seven and she was fourteen,’ she said, at last. ‘Fourteen years old.’

  There was no ambiguity as to her meaning.

  I said: ‘Oh. I see.’

  ‘And Anne was so innocent, such a child. Some girls are so knowing but she wasn’t. She didn’t know anything. She was so precious to her parents that they’d wrapped her in cotton wool. She didn’t know – she had no idea.’

  I too turned my face towards the window then, and looked through the four small panes of glass out into the gardens, where two nuns were weeding a flowerbed and a third was walking very slowly, her arm linked through that of an elderly woman. All the nuns were smiling. This was such a good place, I thought. So open and light and beautiful. It was the antithesis of Thornfield House with its secrets and sins.

  Questions lined themselves up in my mind, one after the other. I had thought I understood the Brecht family, I had thought I knew almost everything there was to know about them, but I knew nothing.

  I remembered waving to the old lady who stood at the front window of Thornfield House, looking out. Anne’s lonely mother. I remembered what she had said about the devil stealing her daughter away.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Withiel realized too late,’ said Mrs Todd. ‘Far too late. By then Anne thought she was in love with him.’

  I blushed then. I remembered how I had felt about Pieter Brecht. How I had been seduced by him, how I had believed in him, how I had wanted him. I looked down at my hands, the bitten-down fingernails, the ringless fingers.

  ‘So he brought her back here, to Magdeburg?’ I asked quietly.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you came with them?’

  ‘I promised Mrs Withiel I’d look after Anne. I promised her.’

  ‘Oh Mrs Todd, you did!’ I took one of her hands in mine, and held it. It was light as a feather, and about as sub stantial. ‘You were wonderful with all of them.’

  ‘When Anne’s daughter was born, she insisted on naming her after her mother,’ Mrs Todd said. ‘She persuaded Pieter’s parents to side with her on this. He hated the name. He was drunk at the baptism. He …’

  The door swung open. I hadn’t heard the footsteps on the tiles of the corridor beyond. I uncurled my spine and turned to see John carrying a tray, a jug of water and a glass, a tiny dish containing three tablets and a plate of bread, cold meat and pickle. With him was the young nun.

  ‘Fünfzehn Minuten!’ she said, tapping her watch and then shaking her head and wagging her finger in a parody of scolding.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  I wanted a little more time. I looked back to Mrs Todd. She was gazing out of the window. I leaned over and kissed her, very gently, on the cheek. She reached up her hand and touched my face.

  ‘You did everything you could,’ I said. ‘You were like a guardian angel to Anne and to Ellen. You were wonderful.’

  ‘I never told anyone about the baby,’ she whispered. ‘No one.’

  ‘I know you didn’t.’

  ‘Nobody found out it was your brother’s.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘You were a good girl, Hannah,’ Mrs Todd murmured, softly enough for neither John nor the nun to hear. ‘You were a good friend to Ellen.’

  I wasn’t though. The truth was, I could not have been a worse one.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  MY FATHER WAS returning from a night shift when he saw me cycling up the lane. It was early, half past six in the morning, and still cool; my breath streamed behind me like my hair. I was so tied up in my thoughts that I didn’t recognize his old Ford van. He parked the van outside our house and then followed me up the lane on foot. I stopped at the church, propped the bike up against the wall, and went through the gate. Dad followed.

  He found me sitting in the cool gloom at the back of the church. I’d never been one for religion, despite the best efforts of both my parents, so he knew something was wrong. He sat beside me for a while in silence then he cleared his throat and awkwardly patted my shoulder. He was as he always was: all beard and navy-blue jersey and the smell of menthol.

  ‘I’m going to Chile, Dad,’ I said. ‘I’m going to help with a fossil dig.’

  ‘Good,’ he said.

  ‘Good?’

  ‘Yes. It’ll do you good to get away from here.’

  ‘Don’t you mind?’

  ‘Of course I mind, but I wouldn’t be much of a father if I didn’t let you do what you wanted to do, would I?’

  I would have liked to have hugged my father then, but we weren’t that kind of family, so I sat still and stared at my knees and the dust on the back of the pew in front.

  ‘Are you worried about telling Mum?’ he asked.

  ‘A bit.’

  ‘She’ll be all right. Probably go a bit misty-eyed at first, but she’s so proud of you, Hannah. You should hear her at the church socials. It’s “Hannah this” and “Hannah that”. The congregation is sick and tired of hearing how wonderful you are.’

  I managed a smile.

  ‘Come on,’ said my dad. ‘Come back home and I’ll cook you a proper breakfast. Two eggs. Black pudding.’

  I shook my head. ‘Thanks, Dad, but I’m going to have breakfast with Ellen.’

  Dad didn’t ask any questions. He just smiled. ‘Good for you,’ he said.

  He patted my back, gave me a fruit pastille from the top of the packet he kept in his trouser pocket, and even though it was warm and a little hairy, I put it in my mouth. I still had a little glob of orange jelly stuck to my back molar when I arrived at Ellen’s house.

  The clinic was a big, double-fronted, brick-built house, set in landscaped gardens. Nobody would have guessed by looking at it what went on inside. We had taken risks just to get there. We invented a story to persuade Mr Brecht to allow Ellen out for a few hours. We told him that I had been unwell and had been referred to the hospital for a check-up, hinting at unspeakable feminine problems. Mrs Todd had agreed to drive me because my father was on night shift. I had wheedled around Mr Brecht, telling him I was scared to go alone and begging him to allow Ellen to come with me, and he had, eventually, agreed. I’d been terrified he would follow Mrs Todd’s car and spent the journey
looking behind me, panicking if any vehicle took the same route as us for more than a mile or two. But we arrived without incident and everything seemed calm and normal. As normal as anything can be, in an abortion clinic.

  Mrs Todd led the way, looking painfully old-fashioned and out of place in her headscarf and coat. We followed behind, holding hands. Ellen had dressed smartly for the occasion. She was wearing one of her mother’s linen dresses and ballet pumps. She was also wearing sunglasses ‘to hide the tears later’, she explained, and I’d had to swallow the irritation I felt that even in this situation she was playing the drama queen, acting out her role.

  I carried a bag that Mrs Todd had prepared for Ellen and hidden in the boot of her car. Mrs Todd went over to the reception desk clutching her old-fashioned handbag by its handles with her chin held high. A big glass vase full of stocks stood on the desk next to a bowl of mints wrapped in paper.

  The woman behind the desk was reassuringly middle-aged and broad of beam. She smiled in a professional way at Mrs Todd, and then at Ellen and me.

  ‘Ellen Brecht,’ Mrs Todd said. ‘She’s here for … to …’

  ‘Ah yes, Ellen. I’ve got you here on the list.’ The woman smiled over Mrs Todd’s shoulder. ‘Which one of you two—’

  ‘Me,’ Ellen said.

  ‘All right, dear. We’ll just take a few details and then the doctor will come and have a chat with you. Nothing to worry about. You’ve got your overnight bag?’

  ‘I’m picking her up this afternoon,’ Mrs Todd said.

  ‘No, I’m afraid after a procedure we insist on an overnight stay, so that we can make sure everything’s all right.’

  ‘I’ve been through all this with someone already,’ Mrs Todd said. ‘It’s been agreed.’

  ‘Well, we’ll see what Doctor says, shall we?’ the receptionist replied, never for a moment losing her crocodile smile.

  The doctor was another woman. She took Ellen off to be examined while Mrs Todd and I sat awkwardly together in the reception area. A pile of expensive, glossy magazines was arranged on a small glass table in the corner of the room, but I felt it would be inappropriate to read about celebrity gossip, given the gravity of the situation. Instead I watched pretty little electric-coloured fish darting in and out of the plants in a large aquarium set into one of the walls.